I've used Alertpay once. I was paying for a translation, and the translator actually insisted on using Alertpay. It seems like a pretty legit service, at least as far as I can tell.

Also, I've been reading through this board for a day or two, and damn but discussions can get derailed here. Maybe I just don't know enough about the shady world of essay mills yet.

The site is promising $8/page and delivery within 12 hours. Also: "We are professional custom writing service with a focus to quality and original work to the client." Also note the meaningless golden seals off to the side with "SATISFACTION GUARANTEED" written on them.

Yeah, it's a scam.

Are the sites rated 2 generally trustworthy? I'm looking for a company to write for, and I really don't want to get caught up in a scam.

A guy using four sockpuppet accounts at the same time, calling someone else a scammer?

I guess that answered my question, so thanks. It's not like I was expecting a whole lot out of that site anyway, so even if I don't make that much off of posting my essays, it's not really a big deal.

You totally sound like you don't have any financial interest in where people go to buy essays.

If the OP is any indication of the sort of writing a non-native writer would produce, then I can say that yes, a native writer will do a better job for you ninety-nine times out of a hundred.

That's not to say that non-native writers are incapable or stupid. Far from it. I'm tutoring a few international students in academic writing right now. They're very smart; they just have problems writing grammatically correct and natural-sounding English. In my experience, most non-native English speakers retain a few recognizable quirks in their writing, even after years of practice writing formal English. This is only natural, but it also means that I wouldn't hire a native German speaker to write a college-level English paper, just as I wouldn't hire a native English speaker to write a college-level German paper.

I'd love to work as an independent writer and not have to involve any website as a middleman that will take a fifty percent cut of what my client is paying. I'm pretty wary of advertising independently on the internet, though. It seems like it's way too easy to get ripped off by your client, or vice versa, depending on how the specific setup works. If I had the client pay the full amount after sending him, say, a fifth of the paper, that could be one solution, but that still leaves the possibility of doing hours of unpaid research. I don't see any solution to that problem.